Sunday, 1 July 2012

Standing by for the takeoff clearance on Lisbon's runway 21. Unusually
dense fog for Lisbon is present making this an LVTO (Low Visibility Take
Off) since the reported touchdown zone RVR (runway visual range) is
200m. A319 CS-TTP bound to Oslo: photo by Mathieu Neuforge, 1 December 2011

Watching the breaks
these cartoon years
they broke away

and left me here, unable to sayIt's all good or things happen for a reasonIt's not all good, and things

happen for no reason
and there is no useful parablein any of this, O Captain!I think I can make out the runway
lights.

Runway at Bucharest Henri Coanda International Airport: photo by Ksn15, 21 September 2007

18 comments:

A few years ago I worked with a group of much younger people who had founded an internet company and were developing what seemed like an impressive, useful product offering substantial protection to copyright owners. One of the things that irritated me most about them was their constant use of the phrase "It's all good." "Flight Attendant to Cabin" is great, however, although tragic. Worse than "It's all good" was when one of the company founders, after making a stupid, avoidable mistake, said to me "It doesn't matter what I do; my success is inevitable." I didn't fit in too well with these guys. Curtis

There's something about flying that puts us outside time and outside any steady reception of the good and reasonable the world would have us tune into.

Cartoon years (a perfect coupling of words): part of us wants them gone or at least some kind of distance There's that sense of playfulness too. So the breaks come (like melting ice sheets) and we find ourselves where the parables don't work.

I love how the poem moves from the opening still reflection to a kind of conversational panic till we're grasping at some sign in the dark.

A former major league baseball player from Alabama for/with whom I once ghosted a book told the story of the many ups and downs in his life as a kind of unfolding tale of deeper meaning at work as an invisible hand guiding the universe. At each turning of the way, he would explain the reversals and volte-faces and resurrections from the ashes with that phrase, Things happen for a reason. So I made that the title of his life story.

But I believe I must have been born on that dark side of the Earth whereupon things happen for no reason.

Well Ray, you know how it is. Just when you think you've escaped the parables, you're breathing a bit easier on the tarmac, the pilot's chubby little fist is on the throttle, and -- look out, here they come!!

It is always different up there escaping the Langolierstheir French-fancy nameleft behind, on Earth, what is leftof the runway, the lights--a little girl speaks plainlythrough her bloody mouthand they say to shut the windows, not look out there at themzig-zag.They don't like cloudsbut prefer concrete.By then, the flight attendanthad taken a seat, too,the lights of Minsk nearingnobody hearingthe pilot's commandto get, get awayfrom there.

Susan, of course the special-effects people stuffed her mouth with blood to keep her from talking.

But talking was never going to be of any use, in any case.

Just consider the gibberish uttered by the Dean Stockwell and Bronson Pinchot characters.

It's been contended the L's actually hatched from the dark imagination of the Bronson Pinchot character. That's the Freudian interpretation. Monsters from the Id and all that.

In truth (and this is a little known fact) the Langoliers were born out of a storm of St Elmo's Fire crackling out from the microwave towers in Minsk. No wonder they grew up funny. The funny thing is, Minsk remained contained within the tumour grid capsule, whereas Athens went metastatic just after takeoff. They say there's an immune factor, an X in the code. But the only hints we've had so far as to just how all this might play out in real time have come from the direction of Saturn.

It's just the not wanting you to say anything but the standard get-along things that make the world go round.

Like It's all good.

Another one they really like is, No worries.

They especially like that one if there's a bit of Standard Airline Reassurance thrown in.

Like, No worries people, just a spot of Turbulence.

Or no worries, just a swarm of Speeding Meatballs with Huge Gnashing Teeth Freshly Escaped from the Id, people.

Or No worries, the landing gear won't come down.

(That was one a United pilot tried on us one time, just minutes out of San Francisco headed for Seattle. Announcing he was turning the plane around and... going back... with the landing gear not down. And the gripping of the handrests was audible, the beads of sweat flowing like Christ's Tears Over Jerusalem. We all wondered whether, since we were now a Grave Crash Accident Risk, San Francisco would even take us -- or whether we'd be told by the Tower, in the musical language of the era, just to Walk On By.)

It seems The Langoliers have returned with a vengeance re the video God is My Co-Pilot: “The [Supreme] uploader has not made this video available in your country. Sorry about that.” Any time now, I expect Athena to retaliate by sending the dreaded IMF troika into action: God save them! (The Langoliers, that is).

Well, as you can see, they had been hot on the trail during the takeoff from Athens, so it's not altogether a surprise to hear that they've caught up and gobbled that video with their huge unselective gnashing teeth. (You'd almost be tempted to think that on their planet they'd been trained as bankers, politicians, insurance adjusters and oil and pharmaceutical company lobbyists before being put into service at their proper task of devouring the world as constituted.) At their astronomical rate of metabolism, they need a good feeding every few minutes. In fact, even as I say that, there's a strange whirring noise, and ... [transmission aborted]